


moving in slow motion

by peachcobbler



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chance Meetings, M/M, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 15:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14451915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachcobbler/pseuds/peachcobbler
Summary: 10:30 Platform 2London King’s CrossCalling at: Berwick-upon-Tweed,Newcastle, Darlington, York &London King’s Cross.





	moving in slow motion

_Edinburgh Waverley_

_._

Eames is waiting for a train.  It’s not one he wants to be on, exactly, since at the other end of it Robert is waiting to emotionally castrate him, but he’s waiting nonetheless.  Real men, he is assured, do not run from their problems, but Eames has made it as far as the National Museum of Scotland and to be perfectly honest he’d still be looking at really old harps in between surreptitious handfuls of gummy bears if Ally hadn’t insisted on getting married this weekend.  He doesn’t pretend to understand why a person might need a dupion silk dress with lace detail and a dropped waist, but he thinks he can see the appeal of Matt, who tucks the labels back into her shirts and cried at the end of Kung Fu Panda 2.

It could be worse.  He has a huge coffee and an overpriced bacon roll he bought from the Upper Crust at the station, and it’s late enough in the morning that he’s not fighting off commuters left and right.  He’s sat on the platform with his earphones in, listening to R.E.M. and trying not to watch the couple entangled one bench over.

It’s difficult, not least because Eames’s natural instinct is to people watch.  Under ordinary circumstances, he’d embrace the opportunity—trains and stations are a treasure trove of mannerisms and accents and the sorts of conversations people should really know better than to have in public.  Something about the movement, about the fleetingness, of train travel, that compels people to have long phone conversations about the state of their marriage in crowded carriages, or tell their life stories to complete strangers they’ll never see again.  It’s purgative.  All the catharsis of venting to a captive audience without any of the commitment.  Everything wiped clean the moment you step down onto the platform.

In theory.

.

Once when Eames was seven and three quarters Jack Mozley snapped every one of the expensive colouring pencils he’d wanted for his birthday, and Eames cried walking home because he didn’t know how he was going to tell their mum.  The next day, Ally took down Jack Mozley in the car park with a move she’d seen recently on WWE.  Eames got new pencils.  Ally got suspended.

Once when Ally was twenty-four and three quarters, she called Eames at three AM to pick her up from a dodgy flat in Islington where she’d mislaid her shirt—despite the fact that he’d still only got his provisional.  He buttoned her backwards into his coat and drove her to a 24-hour McDonald’s because he’d been white-knuckling it for the past forty minutes, and when he set a Happy Meal in front of her she said, “I have never loved you more.”

He probably shouldn’t put that one in the speech.  She might dropkick him.

.

This first stretch is easiest; green and then blue where the track hugs the coastline, sunlight dancing off the water, the heat of it licking his side.  He caps the pen and watches waves against cliffs whip past, dotted here and there with cars; thinks he sees a family dragging picnic blankets, or perhaps beach mats, out of the boot of a Land Rover.

The woman sitting next to him is on page 78 of _The Bone Clocks_ but she’s reading slowly and Eames isn’t invested enough to wait the forty seconds for her to turn the page.  Across the table, another woman is reading the new Jack Reacher, a Burberry trench coat in striking shade of blue folded carefully on the adjacent seat.  When the trolley appears, she buys a croissant and a large cappuccino and applies hand sanitiser.  Eames buys Skittles, three flapjacks and a share-size bag of Doritos, and doesn’t.

For a little while, at least, he manages not to think about weddings, or obligations, or rat bastards who let you paint their kitchens, and it’s almost comfortable.

Almost.

.

_Berwick-upon-Tweed_

.

The weather takes a turn somewhere around the border; as they’re crossing the railway bridge there’s a flash of lightning, and the sky falls dark.  They pull into the next station just before eleven to a sudden downpour.  A small stream of bedraggled passengers haul their bags up off the one platform and proceed to play angry, British Tetris with the luggage racks, bringing with them the scent of wet dog.  Eames, who always travels light, tries not to feel too pleased with himself.  (“Travels light,” Ally’d say, “is one way to put it.  _Pants optional_ —that’s another.”)

There’s a minor scuffle over reserved seating thanks largely to the illegibility of the seat numbers, and across the aisle someone opens _The Telegraph_ in someone else’s face.  It’s all pretty tame—not even a misplaced railcard to liven things up—and Eames replaces his earphones, mildly disappointed.

It’s the most movement any of them see for a while.

.

Due to a combination of Pink Floyd and failing tannoy, Eames doesn’t catch the announcement the first time round—is alerted, rather, by the collective rummaging for phones and systematic repetition of information to family and friends.

“It’s me, yeah, I’m gonna be late, hopefully not too long—”

“—still in the _station_ , Jesus, I can’t believe this—”

“—know, babe, but there’s nothing to be done—”

Delayed.  _Significantly_ delayed.  Eames settles back in his seat with a palpable sense of satisfaction.  Why face your problems like an adult when you could be stuck on a train with unreliable Wifi and delicious E-numbers?

God bless the British public transport system.

.

“Excuse me.”  Eames looks up, removes his headphones.  The woman with the blue coat has set Jack Reacher down on the table—place held by a slip of paper, no cracked spine—and is leaning forward.  She’s not addressing him, of course: given the choice between the guy with the tattoos and the woman drinking a thermos of Ribena, she’s gone with the safer option.  Eames is not the sort of person who gets stopped in the street for directions.

“Would you mind—could I use your telephone?  Only, my son’s meeting me at King’s Cross and I wouldn’t want him to have to wait.  It’s an hour’s drive for him.”

Next to Eames, Ribena is clutching what looks suspiciously like a Nokia 3210.  “I’m sorry,” she says, to Jack Reacher, “but I really need to conserve the battery.”

“You’re very welcome to use mine,” Eames ventures, and they both look at him.  “My phone, I mean.”  He slides the object in question across the table towards her, in illustration.  “To call your son.”

“Oh,” says Jack Reacher, in surprise.  “That’s very sweet of you,” she says, “but I wouldn’t know how to use that.”

Which is fair enough, really; Eames doesn’t either.  He still misses his flip phone.  It suited his sense of the dramatic.  “My—,” he says, then thinks better of it, “— _friend_ tells me it has video and wireless capabilities, I have yet to use either.”

Robert was always more invested in that sort of thing.  Robert would spend hours on Amazon reading reviews, go to three different shops before he found that wireless megasound stereo system with bass enhancement and integrated Bluetooth for the right price, and then Eames would play red-wire-blue-wire for ten minutes, give up and order takeout.  It was cuter to begin with.  Robert would get home to a half-finished stereo system and a metric tonne of Pad Thai, look at Eames with fond exasperation and laugh.

Eames can’t remember when he stopped laughing.  (When he stopped looking fond.)

“I could send a message for you,” he says, “if you give me the number.”

.

She doesn’t give him the number, but she gives him her phone, and he scrolls through the address book until he finds the right one.  “It won’t let me make calls,” she explains, as he’s tapping out the message— _The train your mum is on has been delayed, still in Berwick, will keep you updated—_ “I tried to set it up, but they wanted my credit card details.”

“They usually do,” Eames says, sympathetically.

His phone vibrates the moment he puts it down.

**  
07740232380**

**Today** at 11:31

 _The train your mum is on has been delayed_  
_still in Berwick_  
_will keep you posted_

 _Yes, problems on the line between Berwick and Newcastle._  
_As it stands you’ll be delayed by at least half an hour._  
_Not accounting for Darlington._  
  
  
“He got the message,” Eames says, with mild amusement.

Moments later, the speaker crackles into life.

“All passengers on board the 11:02 East Coast service to London King’s Cross, please be advised that the delay is due to a problem on the line between Berwick and Newcastle.  All southbound trains are suspended until further notice.  We are currently running approximately thirty-seven minutes behind schedule.  We apologise for the inconvenience.”  


**07740232380**

**Today** at 11:39

 _Thank you for letting me know._  
  


.

Forty-three minutes in, all the lights go out.

.

_Newcastle_

.

Jack Reacher’s name is not—astonishingly—Jack Reacher.  It is Andrea Lane.  Eames knows this because there is a name tag sewn into the collar of her trench coat.  Andrea Lane finishes a 400-page book in the time it takes for them to escape Berwick, politely but firmly declines the handful of red and purple Skittles Eames offers, and carries a Maglite in her bag.

She is also mildly terrifying.

He knows this because of the set of her mouth, and the fact that when he asks her if she enjoyed the book she says, “The cleanup was a little sloppy.”

.

Possibly Eames scribbled that last line out a little too vigorously, because when he looks up Andrea Lane is observing him with interest.  It is not unlike having a very bright light shone on his face.  “Writer’s block?” she enquires.

“A bit,” he admits.  “My sister’s getting married.”

“And you’re giving a speech?”

“Giving a speech,” he confirms, “giving her away.  It’s a whole lot of giving, really, and I’m—.”

All she’s got, when it comes down to it: a hundred and eighty pounds of pick-and-mix and poor decisions stuffed into a tuxedo.

Nobody’s first choice.  Winner by default.

“It’s just,” Eames admits, “a lot of pressure.”

“I see,” Andrea says.  “Will your friend be there?”

“My—?”

“Friend,” she says, again.  “The one who picked your phone out.”  Like he said: mildly terrifying.

There’s an A3 seating chart, painstakingly crafted to ensure maximum distance between Matt’s parents and minimum distance between Ally and the food.  On it, Robert is seated between Great Aunt Carol (notoriously handsy) and Eames (a chip off the old block).

“I don’t know,” says Eames, which is really the problem.

.

**07740232380**

**Today** at 13:55

_Darlington is imminent_  
_should I prepare myself??_

_As far as I can tell they’re running on schedule._

**Today** at 13:59

_How exactly would a person prepare themselves for Darlington?_

_same way I’ll prepare for the apocalypse_  
_stockpile Cool Ranch Doritos_

_Naturally._

.

_Darlington_

.

“Tell me about him,” Andrea says.  They’re ten minutes outside of York, waiting for another service to pull in ahead of them.  They’ve been ten minutes outside of York for at least twenty minutes.  At this point, Eames has mostly forgotten what it’s like in the south—has resigned himself to buying thermal underwear and finding out what exactly a ginnel is.

“He’s a financial director,” Eames says, instinctively.  Somehow whenever he’s asked to describe Robert it ends up sounding a lot like a CV.  “Very smart, very driven.  It’s a lot of work, he’s away a lot, but he loves it.”

“Do you?”

“Do I—love it?”  She just raises an eyebrow.  “I—it’s not really about me.  It’s his job.  I love—” _him_ , he means to say, but the word gets stuck in his throat, because reconciling the guy he once bought Hulk slippers for Christmas with the one he sees on weekends is a lot harder now that there’s a third party involved.

“Of course it is,” Andrea says, calmly.  “You have to live with it, too.”

“It means a lot to him,” he says.  He’s not sure why he’s defending Robert, really, except that he’s defending his own choices, too—the person he’s chosen to be with, even if he is a bastard.  “I’ve always known that.  He gets tunnel vision.  It’s not—everyone has their quirks, you know?”

“Those aren’t quirks,” she tells him, “they’re flaws—and you’re quite old enough to know the difference.”

Eames suspects that now is not the moment to admit that he had gummy bears for breakfast.

.

_York_

.

It was Robert’s flat, to begin with.  Two bedrooms, nice hardwood floors, with chrome everything and an enormous Blade Runner poster up over the fireplace.   Horrible blinds over every window that Eames replaced with curtains; rickety IKEA furniture that they swapped, eventually, for a thousand-pound monstrosity of a sofa, and a beautiful chaise that belonged to Eames’s grandmother. 

It was Robert’s to begin with, sure, but it’s theirs now—the stereo that Eames failed to put together, the one dining chair that lacks structural integrity due to adventures in kitchen sex, the slate tile that Eames picked out for the ensuite.  He’d painted the damn kitchen _winter sage_ , and put cushions on the windowsill in the lounge so that they could sit there and read in the morning. 

He loves that flat, still.  He loves their tea cupboard, and Jenny who lives opposite who always brings him her _Hello_ after she’s done with it.

And that’s just the—.  Starting over.  Eames should be used to it by now.

He’ll miss the windowsill.  That’s all.

.

**07740232380**

**Today** at 15:44

_Further consideration has led me to the conclusion that high milk-content snacks would not be optimal post-apocalypse._  
_You’d want something that would last longer._

_have you ever tried to get cheese dust out of suede?_  
  


_I don’t know how to respond to that._

.

_London King’s Cross_

.

They pull into King’s Cross just after five.  The lights in the carriage are still out; en masse, passengers reach blindly for bags tucked under tables and stagger to their feet to begin the zombie shuffle out of the compartment.  Eames wakes Ribena, whose head has been lolling against his shoulder for the last forty minutes, and helps her to lift her suitcase down from the overhead rack.  Andrea buttons and belts her trench coat, and slips her book back into her bag.  She fails entirely to look like someone who has been on a train for seven hours.

“Well,” Eames says, while they’re waiting for people to get off, “it was lovely to meet you.”

When Andrea shakes his hand she slides something into it, so smoothly that for a strange moment he thinks she’s tipping him.

She’s not—it’s a business card.

“When you’ve sorted your loose ends,” she says, “give me a call.  I have a project you might be interested in.”

Eames is sweaty and exhausted and on his way across the platform manages to get Dorito hands all over some poor man in an expensive suit.  Tomorrow, he’ll get up early and call Robert and then take the Tube to Borough Market to get the doughnuts Ally loves, and he’ll wear the tie she picked out and stand up in front of their friends and not tell them about the time she woke up on a houseboat.  But for now—for now, it’s enough to collapse onto a hotel bed and pull the business card out of the pocket of his jeans and find that on the back is written: _Say that she raised you right._


End file.
